Notable Quotables - 01/31/1994

January 31, 1994 - 1:00am

Maureen Dowd Admits the
Obvious

"In a celebrated Rolling
Stone interview, the President lost it and ranted about how
he had 'not gotten one damn bit of credit from the knee-jerk
liberal press, and I am sick and tired of it, and you can put
that in the damn article.' (Yes, that's the same knee-jerk
liberal press that helped get him elected.)"- New
York Times reporter Maureen Dowd in The New York Times
Magazine, January 23.

Downplaying Whitewater

"The beauty of the special
counsel is that he or she has to prove criminal wrongdoing, and
not only criminal wrongdoing, but criminal intent, and I think,
you know, everyone is certain that doesn't exist with the
Clintons."- Newsweek reporter Eleanor Clift on The
McLaughlin Group, January 15.

"The reason the guy's still
in the Senate is that he always goes too far. The fact is what
we have here is a modern Salem witch trial with no accusations,
no evidence: trial by ordeal. That's going to be ugly enough
without putting Congress in the middle of it...if I could be
bipartisan, a small group of us liberals objected to what was
done to John Tower, who was not permitted to face his accusers.
In this case we have somebody who as yet has not been permitted
to face his accusers."- Boston Globe columnist
and former reporter Tom Oliphant, January 15 Inside
Washington.

Defending Clinton From
the Left

"Do you give Bill Clinton
credit for addressing serious issues that went untouched for 12
years - deficit reduction, gun control, world trade, health
care. He has certainly taken on tough questions, and made them
not a question of if, but how much."- Today's
Bryant Gumbel to Mother Jones Editor Jeffrey Klein,
January 7.

Conservatives for Gas
Taxes?

"I know you can find
conservatives as well as liberals who would argue that in the
interests of not only deficit reduction, but energy policy, that
a higher gas tax could be stomached in this country. And I'm not
going to put a price on it, but higher than 4.3 cents,
certainly."- Wall Street Journal Washington
reporter Jackie Calmes on C-SPAN's Journalists' Roundtable,
January 14.

Who's More
Authoritarian?

"Boris Yeltsin had
unconstitutionally dissolved the parliament and he used a tank
assault to enforce his decree....what Yeltsin has been doing is
quickly moving his own people into the White House as a way of
consolidating his now much more authoritarian power."-
Dan Rather, January 13 CBS Evening News.

"In five years, Mikhail
Gorbachev has transformed the Soviet Union from a rigid police
state to what he describes as a freewheeling infant
democracy."- Rather's introduction to a story on making
criticism of Gorbachev illegal, May 15, 1990 Evening News.

PBS Pro-Democrat?
Ridiculous

"As for public TV being a
mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, I think anybody who watches
Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser and Washington
Week in Review and The McLaughlin Group and all
these shows underwritten by huge corporate interests that are
basically conservative or center-right opinion shows, I don't
know what planet they're living on if they're talking about a
mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. It's a mystery to me."- NPR Talk of the Nation host Ray Suarez on C-SPAN's Journalists
Roundtable, Jan. 7.

Sobbing for the Soviet
Union

"For more than 70 years,
Russia dreamed the Soviet dream: the dream of a classless
society, the dream of a workers' paradise. The classless state
is now a state with a growing population of haves and an
exploding population of have-nots. For many, the workers'
paradise has become a homeless hell."- ABC's Morton Dean,
January 14 Good Morning America.

"I don't know whether you
want to call the economic policies of the Yeltsin government
since 1992 'shock therapy' or just dumb. But what they did to
these people savaged this society: took their life savings,
destroyed their standard of living, and people are selling off
their household possessions."- CBS News consultant
Stephen Cohen on the CBS Evening News, January 14.

Receiving Clinton

President Finds Muscovites Warm
but a Bit Preoccupied- New York Times, January 14

On the streets of Moscow, a
chilly reception for Clinton- USA Today, same day

No Pro-Lifers at the Post

"If you have a staff as
totally unrepresentative of the national debate over abortion as
ours is, you'd have a rule about not marching in a pro-abortion
protest because the whole staff could conceivably be there...If
we had real diversity, it wouldn't be an issue. But we
don't."- Washington Post New York correspondent
Malcolm Gladwell quoted in Editor & Publisher,
December 11.

GOP Needs to Bury
Abortion Issue

"Although I think that the
Republicans are off to a good start, at least burying abortion
to the extent that they can right now. I mean, Ralph Reed, the
head of the Christian Coalition, you just heard him. He sounded
like a pro-choice believer. But I think that's the very first
thing they have to do, and it's a requirement."- NPR
reporter Mara Liasson on CNN's Late Edition, January 2.

Paranoia Trio: Perot,
Inman, Clift

"People who want to give
Ronald Reagan the entire credit for the collapse of the Soviet
Union ignore the fact that the Soviet economy was collapsing and
the Reagan Administration covered it up...The CIA concealed what
was happening over there so they could keep the defense budget
over here high."- Eleanor Clift on The McLaughlin
Group, January 15.

Lorena: Society Made Her
Do It

"Psychologists and other
observers believe that ultimately the Bobbitt case is simply a
reflection of society, a society that tolerates, encourages, and
even glamorizes violence, no matter what the cost."- ABC
reporter Karen Burnes concluding a January 22 World News
Saturday story.

Correction: In the last issue we
identified Lars-Erik Nelson as Newsday's Washington
Bureau Chief. While he held that title until last year with the New
York Daily News, he is now a columnist for Newsday.

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